


Strange Magic

by literati42



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Good Parent Gil Arroyo, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Realism, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Team as Family, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literati42/pseuds/literati42
Summary: A magic realism tale of Malcolm Bright developing wings at age 15. What happened then and what happens now?
Comments: 26
Kudos: 94
Collections: Literati42 Commissions Trades Requests





	Strange Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uwulet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uwulet/gifts).



> CW: Self-harm. The self-harm is in regards to the wings, but please approach with caution 
> 
> A new addition to my Trade/Request/Commission collection, for owllson who gave the prompt of a wing fic for Malcolm. 
> 
> As always, please catch up with me on twitter @themythofpsyche or on tumblr @literati42  
> And please click the link to find out about my Prodigal Son related projects:  
> https://wp.me/p9PW9O-8I  
> If you enjoy my writing, it would mean a lot if you would go to/share this link to help me spread the word!

His father told him there were no monsters, but then again, his father lied about a lot of things.

Malcolm looked in the mirror, the wings spread out from his bare back, feathered and large like Reinassance portraits of angels, but black as charcoal. He flexed them, feeling the stiffness from hiding them for so long without rest. He folded them back painfully. The wings shifted into a size so small it was hard to believe the strength and width of them. Malcolm was a man of science, but here was his own body, defying all logic.

He pulled on his button-up over the strange appendages, feeling waves of pain, but pushed through it. Next was his vest and suit jacket. The layers helped hide the small bulges where his wings lay, almost but not quite flat against his back. He fixed his hair and headed out, going to the precinct as if he was normal. Well, as normal as the child of a serial killer could be.

_-_-_

When she was little, Ainsley told Malcolm that she saw a monster with big black wings descending toward their house some times out her bedroom window. He would tell her she was just dreaming. She told their mother too, and Jessica laughed it off, kissing the little blonde head and telling Martin that maybe he needed to temper his bedtime stories to their imaginative daughter.

This was around the time she told them about Mr. Boots.

No one believed her about either story. No one believed her about anything back then. Sometimes Malcolm wondered if that was part of why she was so devoted to uncovering the truth. Because she wanted so badly to be believed.

_-_-_

Malcolm never asked his father about the winged monster his sister saw. He tried so hard to remember if the timeline of her stories matched up to their father’s murders, but he had no way of knowing when she had seen the monster. We so rarely know which things are the most important to remember until later.

He was afraid to know what his father would say. Afraid of the truth and equally afraid of yet another lie. What would it mean if they both had wings? Besides, he had no desire for his father to find about his own wings. Martin Whitly exploited every bit of knowledge he gained.

Malcolm pushed the thought away as the elevator doors opened, letting him into the bullpen of the precinct. He walked to the conference room, glancing at the murder board first and then clapping his hands together as he turned around to face the team, smiling. “Who’s ready for some murder?”

“You say this shit on purpose, I know it,” JT said.

Malcolm was about to reply when another wave of pain shot up from his cramped wings. He cringed, reaching up to rub his shoulder.

“You good, Bright?” Dani asked. Honestly, he was certain he heard those words from her more than any others, and that said a lot about the way people saw him. Gil strode over, cupping his neck.

“You all get started. Bright, with me,” he said before the profiler could answer. He guided Malcolm into his office and shut the door, concern on his brow.

“Are they hurting again?”

Malcolm gave a tight nod.

Gil knew, of course. There were very few things about him that Gil did not know.

_-_-_

Malcolm woke up screaming. Even at age fifteen, this was no new thing. Gil ran down the hall to the guest room, which the years since Martin’s arrest he had come to think of as Malcolm’s room for the many nights the kid stayed over. So many of those nights ended up this way.

“Hey, hey, kid,” Gil said, sitting on the bed and catching the thrashing teenager. “I have you.” Malcolm pulled out of his grip, reaching toward his back and violently tugging at his t-shirt.

“It hurts, it hurts,” Malcolm gasped.

“It’s a dream, Malcolm, kid. It’s a dream.” Gil tried to pry his hands away from his back, but the kid was fighting him so hard, tearing at the material as if he could rip it free.

“It hurts!” Malcolm was screaming now, sobbing, and the pain sounded so genuine.

“I have you,” he said again, feeling the kid’s pain as if it was his own.

“No!” Malcolm finally jerked the shirt over his head and began scratching violently at his back.

“Malcolm, stop!”

There was blood from where his fingernails were tearing into his flesh. Malcolm had a lot of violent nightmares, but nothing like this, never like this. Then Malcolm stilled, his eyes widened, and he seemed to go even paler than before. Then a scream Gil would never forget ripped from his lungs.

The wings unfolded violently, protruding from Malcolm’s back and spreading out across the room so fast, Gil had to jump back to avoid them. They were huge and black. His eyes widened in shock.

Malcolm was gasping, the pain gone, but it seemed to have left so little of him behind.

Gil was shocked, overcome. Nothing, nothing even in his eventful life, had ever prepared him for this.

_-_-_

Malcolm stood in Gil’s office, “Shouldn’t we get back to the team? They need the profile.”

“We will,” Gil said, he leaned on his desk and looked at him. “Talk to me, Bright. They hurting again?”

Malcolm flinched, the way he always did when anyone mentioned his wings. “Not seriously, just minor.”

“Have you been stretching them? Flying at night?” Gil narrowed his eyes. “Of course, you haven’t. At least you stretch them daily in your apartment?”

“I…”

“Bright.”

“Gil…”

The detective shook his head, going over and closing the blinds on the windows and the door. “Let me see them.”

Malcolm took a step back, “They are fine.”

“You haven’t…”

“No,” Malcolm said quickly, “I haven’t. I swear.”

_-_-_

The night they found out about his wings, Gil wanted to call Jessica at once. It took every bit of pleading Malcolm had in him to make Gil swear he would not tell a single soul, except for Jackie because that was non-negotiable. Gil was not good at keeping secrets, but this one he kept. They all agreed that Jessica did not need this on her, not now.

“She already has one monster in her life.”

“You are not a monster,” Gil said with such force. They were shocked, yes. Confused, undoubtedly, but none of it had shaken one once of how Gil saw him. Malcolm was not confident if he believed the same would be true of Jessica. She loved him, he knew that, but this…this. It was almost too much that Gil knew.

They spent the next several weeks researching what they could on strange wing phenomena. Most of what they found came from fringe websites and unreputable sources. There was one rumor they ran into over and over again. A winged cryptid seen near the places where the Surgeon’s bodies were found or on nights when he struck.

Fifteen-year-old Malcolm collapsed into the arms of his surrogate father, sobbing. “I’m like him. I’m like him.”

“You are not a monster,” Gil repeated.

The message bounced off the reality of what Malcolm saw in front of him as the wings fluttered as if of their own will around him.

_-_-_

Two weeks later, crying and alone in the large bathroom of the Milton house his mother refused to move out of, Malcolm took a butcher knife from the kitchen and decided to remove the cursed appendages permanently.

It was harder than he thought, but slowly there was blood and feathers gathering on the floor around him. Blood. So much blood, and pain, such intense pain. Malcolm cried out. No, there was too much blood. He was the son of a doctor. He knew this was not good.

Darkness rose up and met him.

_-_-_

“How could you not tell me!” Jessica was screaming when Malcolm came to. He was not in the bathroom anymore, but neither was he at the hospital. He was in his own room with a bag of blood on an IV hook, pumping into his arm. “Wha…”

“Hello, kid.” This was Jackie’s voice. She gently rested her hand on his forehead. “Don’t move. You lost a lot of blood, and those stitches are my best work, but even still, you could pull them.”

“Jackie?”

“Your mother was worried about taking you to a real hospital,” Jackie said. “Luckily, you know the best Doctor on the planet.” She smiled at her own joking brag, but it did not reach her eyes. She rubbed her hand through his hair, as the sound of his mother yelling continued from the next room, not quite clear enough for him to make out more words.

“What…?”

“You hurt yourself,” Jackie said. She was blunt, a true Bronx girl, as Gil always said. “You tried to cut the wings off. Malcolm. Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t want to be like him anymore.” Malcolm closed his eyes, too tired to stay awake a moment longer.

_-_-_

In Gil’s office, Malcolm slowly took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and let the wings unfurl. He cringed in pain. They really were stiff.

Gil walked over, a handheld above them slightly. “Can I?”

Malcolm gave a quick nod. His surrogate father slowly began massaging the wings open further. He was practically an expert at it at this point. “You haven’t been preening.”

“I hate it when you call it that.”

“You’re the one who loves technical terms,” Gil replied. “Mind?”

“Of course not,” Malcolm said, resigning himself to staying longer than he intended. Gil gently began running his fingers through the feathers.

_-_-_

In the middle of the night, Gil opened his back door to find fifteen-year-old Malcolm, soaking wet, water dripping from his hair and wings.

“They grew back,” Malcolm said, and Gil could see that not all the water on the kid’s face was form the rain.

_-_-_

Finished preening and massaging the wings, Gil stood back. “You have to take better care of your wings, kid.”

“I know,” Malcolm said, “I just got so busy, with the girl in the box and then Watkins and…”

“Malcolm.” Gil gave him a look. They both knew all of that was just excuses.

“I know.”

_-_-_

After he nearly died, and then the wings grew back in a matter of weeks, Malcolm swore to his mother, Gil, and Jackie, he would never do that again. His mother, it turned out, handled it all better than he could have expected.

“Afterall,” she said, boozy in the middle of the afternoon. “After your father, what could surprise me?”

Her hand shook as she said it, so Malcolm was never sure how true that was, but from that day forward, she handled it the way Jessica Whilty always did: with style. She helped him get clothes fitted to keep his wings hidden when they folded up because “Unexplainable wings are no reason not to look incredible.”

_-_-_

Malcolm’s wings did feel a lot better after Gil helped him care for them. He fluttered them. “You’re right.”  
“When you start realizing I usually am, your life will be simpler,” Gil replied.

“Lieutenant Arroyo?” Edrisa’s voice came into the office about a half-second before she did.

The clipboard clattered to the floor.

Malcolm turned, his eyes wide, his wings all the way outstretched.

“What the…” JT’s voice said.

“You’re…you’re…” Edrisa stuttered.

Dani stood there in stunned silence.

Monster. Monster. Monster. He waited for the screams, waited for them to call him what he always called himself.

“…beautiful,” Edrisa’s voice was full of awe.

There were a lot of chapters in Malcolm’s life, and in that moment, a new one started.

**Author's Note:**

> If you or anyone you know shows signs of self harm, please contact the self-harm help line:  
> https://www.crisistextline.org/selfharm
> 
> If you want to learn more about self-harm and what to do, please check out NAMI's site:  
> https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions/related-conditions/self-harm


End file.
